Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900 (Abridged Edition)

Paperback | April 21, 2008

This abridged edition of Haruo Shirane's popular anthology, Early Modern Japanese Literature, retains the essential texts that have made the original volume such a valuable resource. The book introduces English-speaking readers to prose fiction genres, including dangibon, kibyoshi (satiric picture books), sharebon (books of wit and fashion), yomihon, kokkeibon (books of humor), gokan (bound books), and ninjobon (books of romance and sentiment). It also features poetic genres such as waka, haiku, senryu, and kyoka, and plays ranging from Chikamatsu's puppet plays to nineteenth-century kabuki. Readers will continue to benefit from the anthology's selection of significant essays, treatises, literary criticism, folk stories, and other noncanonical works, as well as the numerous prints that accompanied these works. They will also find Shirane's introductions and critical commentary, which guide the reader through the allusive and often elliptical nature of these incredible selections.

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This abridged edition of Haruo Shirane's popular anthology, Early Modern Japanese Literature, retains the essential texts that have made the original volume such a valuable resource. The book introduces English-speaking readers to prose fiction genres, including dangibon, kibyoshi (satiric picture books), sharebon (books of wit and fa...

Haruo Shirane is Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture at Columbia University and author of The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of The Tale of Genji and Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory and the Poetry of Basho. With Columbia University Press, he has published Traditional Japanese Literature; Classical Japanese: ...

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Table of Contents

PrefaceHistorical Periods, Measurements, and Other Matters1. Early Modern Japan2. Ihara Saikaku and the Books of the Floating World3. The Poetry and Prose of Matsuo Basho4. Chikamatsu Monsaemon and the Puppet Theater5. The Golden Age of Puppet Theater6. Dangibon and the Birth of Edo Popular Literature7. Comic and Satiric Poetry8. Literati Meditations9. Early Yomihon: History, Romance, and the Supernatural10. Sharebon: Books of Wit and Fashion11. Kibyoshi: Satiric and Didactic Picture Books12. Kokkeibon: Comic Fiction for Commoners13. Ninjobon: Sentimental Fiction14. Gokan: Extended Picture Books15. Ghosts and Nineteenth-Century Kabuki16. Late Yomihon: History and the Supernatural Revisited

Editorial Reviews

This volume provides a cornucopia of early modern Japanese texts, from high to low, the cool reason of philosophy and literary criticism to 'hot' fiction for popular consumption, Rai Sanyo's history to Chikamatsu's historical drama, kanshi to haiku, autobiography to ghost stories. On the basis of this volume alone, one can mount a comprehensive course in Edo literature.